A working week in 2002. Same day in 2025.
The settlement cycle is the plumbing under every trade. Here is how long it has taken to actually settle one, decade by decade.
| When | Cycle | What it meant |
|---|---|---|
| 2002 | T+5 | Five working days from trade to settlement. |
| 2003 | T+2 | Two days. The standard for nearly twenty years. |
| 2023 | T+1 | Next day. India got here before the US did. |
| 2025 | T+0 | Same day. Optional, top 500 stocks. |
About that T+0 line. It is optional and only the 500 biggest stocks so far. Trade inside the early afternoon window and the cash settles the same evening. The exchange is working to widen it. And the quiet bragging right. India moved to next day settlement in January 2023. The US only caught up in May 2024, sixteen months later. For once the fastest plumbing in the market runs from Mumbai, not New York.